


in another town

by ifitgivesyoujoy



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-01
Updated: 2012-12-01
Packaged: 2017-11-19 23:15:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/578693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ifitgivesyoujoy/pseuds/ifitgivesyoujoy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>James Buchanan Barnes stands on a bridge over the Neva on a warm day in July, and St. Petersburg glitters around him. This isn't how he remembers it, but these days, nothing is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in another town

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from the song "Another Town" by Regina Spektor.

James Buchanan Barnes stands on a bridge over the Neva on a warm day in July, and St. Petersburg glitters around him.  Music floats from a river boat full of tourists as it passes under him.  It’s one of the few clear days this city will have this year, and the brightly painted facades of the buildings lining the river are as bright as they will ever be.  Sunlight soaks into his jacket, and it’s much too hot for this, really, but the glint of his metal fingers on the guardrail remind him to keep it on.  

This isn’t how he remembers it, but these days, nothing is.  

“Strange, isn’t it?” Natalia Romanova says, red hair loose and stunning and dangerous as she leans out over the water below them.  

“Yes,” he says.  

He wonders how much the tourists on the river really know.  He wonders what they’d say if they could have sat in this spot twenty years ago, thirty, forty.  It’s all been cleaned up and renamed, older history patched up and polished to disguise the crumbling effects of newer history.  Not that the cracks have been sealed, not that the people and foundations behind these facades aren’t still crumbling, but the shiny veneer is enough change to throw him off track.  He isn’t really in Leningrad, so he might as well be anywhere.  

Maybe he’s on this same bridge with this same woman, guns strapped to their legs, running after the next target or dodging each other in some training exercise or just standing still, looking out on a river that would never let a fourteen-story cruise ship dock safely.  Maybe he’s on a different bridge, halfway around the world, his companion a skinny little boy with his shirt buttoned to the top and his hand cupped around a broken nose.  Maybe he’s on that bridge with a man whose nose is hard to break these days, a man with a sympathetic smile and a star on his chest anchoring him in symbolism.  Maybe there isn’t much difference.  Maybe there’s nothing but difference.  

“We should go,” Natasha says finally, straightening her shoulders, heels clicking on the pavement.  “Fury’s having one of Stark’s planes take us back this afternoon.  We’re needed in New York, it seems.”  

Bucky hesitates, and his fingers grip the rail harder than ever.  Back to New York.  Is he in New York?  Isn’t he caught somewhere between Manhattan and Brooklyn, suspended over the Neva, watching everything change at once in a swirl of color and light and noise and blood?  

She reaches out to touch his hand, the human one, his knuckles locking and turning white, her hand cool and smooth and pale.  “James.”  

He isn’t sure, for a wild terrifying moment, of anything, of where he is or who he’s with or what his name should be,  _Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, 107th Infantry_ …and then he looks at Natasha’s face, soft the way it has only ever been for him, and he stills.  He lets his fingers relax, lets them lift and twine with hers.  

“Where am I going?” he says, and his voice feels like it shouldn’t work.  

“Right now, we’re going to New York to meet with Fury.”  She lifts an eyebrow.  “Unless you have a different plan?”  

His metal hand unclenches and slips from the finger-shaped grooves it’s dug.  “No.”  It really is too hot for this jacket.  “No, I’m going with you.”  

Natasha pulls her hand away, and for a woman standing in a city of brand new facades, she really hasn’t changed a bit.  “Good.”  

They turn to walk, close enough that the backs of their hands brush, and the two of them step off the bridge together.  


End file.
